I was stationed inside an underground Air Force nuclear missile launch facility with the trigger that can start WWIIII and end all of humanity in under 30 minutes with Minuteman III ICBMs.

I entirely regret having signed up after all I saw and learned working there.

If you knew what I do, you wouldn't think so highly of the military industrial complex.

It's literally everything the Nazis ever wanted since their ideology is most certainly embedded in it.

I dgaf what your tiny inexperienced mind thinks, I get my VA retirement checks direct deposited every month all the same. It's unbelievable to you because you don't have what it takes to put on a uniform and pass the TS background check in order to work in the most secure and dangerous location on the planet.

If you hinge an opinion on the age length of a Reddit account, your mind is closed and nothing I say will open it.

The first time I'd ever heard of Rush Limbaugh was when I was when I was an 18 year old one striper stationed inside an underground Air Force nuclear missile launch facility. A facility that could kill tens of millions of people anywhere in the world in under 30 minutes with our Minuteman III ICBMs that each carry a 350 kT yield.

At the beginning of our 3 day alert rotation, we'd drive hours of dirt roads from central base to the reach the site, buried below the frozen Earth of a farmer's field in the middle of nowhere. Inside our suburban vehicles, the launch commander would usually drive while support staff in the back seat would sleep or chat together.

The commander (originally from Alabama) I had would turn Rush on the radio and force the rest us to listen to his preaching. The commander would tell us all about his religious ideals and how democrats were evil, explaining America was headed for Civil War someday.

Naturally I was alarmed. Not just because this guy had control over our planets most destructive weapons but that everyone in the vehicle was on board with it. As Airmen that worked in a place that could start and end WWIIII, we would trade scenarios about how it would go down. In those conversations, my commander joked that if it ever came to that, he'd already made his amends with destroying humanity because God chose him to cleanse the Earth of Satan.

I didn't find any of this amusing and asked him to turn off the radio or change the channel to music, to which he refused. What was more alarming was realizing everyone in the vehicle was an evangelical white male from the South who believed in Civil War part deuce and a long string of ridiculous Rush Limbaugh's bigoted conspiracy theories.

He told me to shut up because I was the only one complaining. I reminded him that as a superior officer, he was going against UCMJ by imposing his unwanted religious and political beliefs on me, a subordinate under his command. He thought as a one striper, I would just sit and take it. I did take it, right to his commanding officer and he was reprimanded with a warning but not appropriately removed from his post. Weeks later inside the facility, he took a moment to threaten me when no one was around.

Although a single commander isn't enough to launch our nukes, a president like Trump sure made my ass pucker for 4 years, worried he was going to send a warhead to a hurricane or any place he was hating on that day. That he has willing people close enough to do it. I'm very thankful for General Milley taking action, it could very well have saved us if Trump had a humanity ending tantrum.

As a retired 20-year veteran this was a common thread amidst my peers. If it wasn't Rush, it was Alex Jones but the themes were always the same, bigotry, wild conspiracy theories, evangelical psychosis and the promise of a coming Civil War they were preparing for. I was always surrounded by people I felt were the real enemies of the state in places with access to weapons of mass destruction and access to top secret materials. I think of Coast Guard Lt. Paul Hasson who was an avowed white supremacist who wanted to kill Congressmen in the Hill in order to start a race war because he believed America should be their homeland.

The next election will be our most important one in American history. If these QAnon loons get their hands on the trigger again, as an atheist, I will pray to the universe that they don't use them as pawns to manipulate or end our democracy.

Thanks for listening. My account is new because I was recently diagnosed with a life threatening illness and joined support groups on Reddit. I try to stay out of the fray but with my time limited, I'm compelled to share.